A few months back I had the chill honor of being asked to contribute to a story for the current December issue of Vogue, written by the dream person Alexandra Kleeman, a piece which explores the new wave of salon power structure reformation rolling though the hair industry.

Hairdressers are walking away from salons and forging their own special places and paths to make their work. The traditional hair world is disintegrating, and I’m sitting quietly in my white cave in the West Texan desert, smiling and doing haircuts on holy Latina women.

This conversation was easy and comfortable for me as I’ve spent the last eight years operating as a free hair agent with zero interest in following the ways of the old white patriarchal hair clan. Having been raised as a bit of a test tube baby INSIDE of this daddy machine, then escaping as soon as I could hoist myself over the edge of the petri dish, I was very pleased to say some things about my Xperience, my reaction, my vision for the future.

Ms. Kleeman was graceful but poignant with her questions and I tried to control the robust disdain I usually carry in my voice when commenting on the male-centric hierarchical systems which have vined their way through a pretty damn sacred and powerful (+ANCIENT) care practice.

I’ve always said that the best hairdressers are psychics and that there are no male psychics, so

¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I definitely did not say this to Ms. Kleeman as I have learned to control my trypper reactions to press inquiries because let’s be honest I’ll only sound like a new age white girl a la GOOP culture and I really did want to have a voice in this article.

It is women who are leaving the salon world, and women who are finding light-filled caves to cut in. Women who are rejecting their hair daddies, women who are working without health insurance, without the dubious safety nets proffered by their fathers, sometimes illegally, sometimes uncomfortably, always courageously, women who are saying no to the laughable archaic methods of the old ways. Not men. Men are staying, men are scared. That’s OK boys! This whole ugly cobweb is self-repairing as we speak, it is gonna be OK.

I told Ms. Kleeman that what we are witnessing is one of the many early indicators of the return of the matriarchy- knowing that this sentence would not be published! But also knowing that we need to start saying these words to each other, saying them out loud. She smiled over the phone and we laughed together, feeling a truth.